So Close So Far_developments

So Close So Far_developments

So Close So Far is a project born from a spark. The spark was launched by the Center of Cultural Decontamination, leader of the international project TESTIMONY-TRUTH OR POLITICS.

Marianna and I, as videomaker and performer, applied to the Call to Artist launched by The Center and we were selected with other artists coming from different countries. So our trip begun.

Some questions merged from our first approaches: what do we know about the wars in former Yugoslavia? Were there Yugoslav refugees in Italy at that time? Is it possible to remember overcoming the pain? How is possible to transfer an experience? What kind of power has the voice in communicating an experience?

Step by step we focus the project on two main ways: sharing and voice. The aim was to elaborate an art creation by working on the concepts of testimony, remembrance, conflicts overcoming, mutual knowledge and comprehension.

At the starting of So Close So Far, we didn’t know about the real importance of the project but after months of work, we have realized the great responsibility we have: we have contacts with people that are sharing their memories, their life; with people that, at the same time, are artists, living in different areas of the world.

So, what we are trying to create is an archive of memories and a platform able to enhance connections. We will create a kind of mosaic composed by the participating artists. Each window will represent a single artist with her/his testimony, links, references.

Until now we had contacts with several artists and we had the chance to meet two of them, geographically closer to our workplace. We have many dreams for So Close So Far and we will continue the project also after the collaboration within TESTIMONY-TRUTH OR POLITICS.

As soon as possible we will publish the first testimonies on our website. In the meantime, the Call to Action will remain open, permanently. With the testimonies collected until October 2017 we will create an audio/video installation that, according to the project’s schedule of “TESTIMONY”, will be presented during a traveling exposition in Austria, Italy, Serbia and Bosnia Herzegovina.

The audio/video installation is named Past is Present, enhancing the importance to know our common past, in order to live the present. It is not the obsession of the past but the transformation of the experiences through the sharing of personal narratives, often hidden by the dominant historical versions.

It is also important to not confine the past conflict in a kind of isolated box within our historical past but we need to put in communication the past with the present to comprehend our time and also to understand the dynamics of contemporary conflicts that are crossing our societies.

The voice of the other is my voice. Listening the narration of the other permits a better comprehension of the self.